Oracle Blog

Thursday Dec 18, 2008

A couple of weeks ago Sun released OpenSolaris 2008.11. For the last year or more, Sun's Willie Walker has led the OpenSolaris accessibility effort, and this recent release shows all of the tremendous work done by Willie and a host of engineers on the OpenSolaris team. Particular attention was paid to accessible install (leading one blind OpenSolaris user to say "it was the smoothest operating system install that I have ever performed"). Leveraging the Sun-led open source GNOME accessibility work, OpenSolaris includes the latest in assistive technologies like Orca and GOK and Dasher, as well as a host of other accessibility enhancements that have been developed in the open source GNOME community.

Using the occasion of this release of OpenSolaris, Sun's Bill Vass wrote movingly about Dismantling the Digital Divide in his blog last week. In my meetings with Bill, I've always been impressed with his passion around technology accessibility, and the focus he brings to accessibility within Sun Federal which he leads.

Willie put together a great set of videos which demonstrate the accessibility features available in OpenSolaris 2008.11. I encourage you to check them out!